Conard County Watch Page 11

  Gage nodded. “Isn’t this where they found Sue, that big, complete T. rex?”

  “On the Cheyenne River reservation,” Renee said. “I don’t know if you remember the heist, but the big boys moved in and wanted to take it away from the local museum and...well, after all the ownership questions were settled, I guess she was auctioned to Chicago for over eight million dollars.”

  “You sound like you don’t like that,” Cope remarked.

  Renee sighed. “The people who found her were doing a reasonably good job of caring for her, she was bringing money into the local economy, and, well...” Another sigh. “I guess she’s in a better place now, and at least Cheyenne River and the local town got something for her.”

  “What are you planning to do with these fossils?” Gage wanted to know.

  “That’ll be up to the local tribe. Their land. I just want the information.”

  “Altruistic?”

  Renee smiled. “Reasonable. I don’t need to own the bones to learn from them and I’m not planning to open up a mountainside museum. Plus, Gray Cloud promised me as much access to the finds as I want.”

  A short while later, she and Cope hiked upward with fresh backpacks filled with dried foods and medical supplies just in case. Over their shoulders they strapped the insulated bottles of coffee.

  “I’m sorry about all this,” Cope remarked. “You needed this crap like a major headache.”

  She grabbed a handhold and decided that looking up at his backside was far from the worst view she’d ever had. “Things happen. Rare is the dig that goes without complication. I’ve got a friend in Turkey, an archaeologist, and he’s going nuts trying to get his work done in between periods of unrest and combat, and living with the constant fear that something really priceless will get destroyed. I’ll take this any day, as long as no one gets seriously hurt.”

  “I can see that.” He turned and offered her a hand over a particularly rough part of the trail. “I saw where the Taliban blew up those Buddha carvings in the mountains. A crime against human history. I guess it’s been even worse in Iraq with all the theft from the national museum there.”

  “The stuff we’re losing can never be replaced,” she agreed as she caught her breath. That last little push had been hard. Instead of opening her coffee, she reached for the mouthpiece and sipped from her camel pack. Time to change the water, she decided. It wasn’t exactly fresh.

  She’d have loved to drink straight out of that icy stream, but she knew the recklessness of that. Years ago on a camping trip, she’d learned the hard way that if beavers could get there, the water was apt to carry giardia. She never wanted to experience that again.

  At last they reached the top. “Now it’s a gamble,” Renee remarked. “Do we gamble that if we stay at this end we won’t get rock dropped on us?”

  “Let me think about it. I want a cup of coffee first. You?”

  Even inside her gloves her hands had begun to feel chilly, so she welcomed the idea. As they sat on boulders with their hands cupped around mugs, she studied the mess. “Part of me feels lucky,” she said. “It doesn’t seem to have covered up the important parts of the rock face. At least as far as I know.”

  “Yeah.” He blew a breath over his coffee and a puff of steam arose. “On the other hand...”

  She shook her head at him. “Let’s not get to the other hand. We’re eventually going to have to find a way to move that debris out so no one gets hurt. That’ll waste a lot of time. Then we’ll know if anything important got covered.”

  A few minutes later, she rose and walked over to the edge of the slide.

  “Be careful,” Cope called. “It’s pretty much in a state of natural balance right now. Move the wrong stone and that may all come down.”

  “Which might not be so bad,” she remarked. “No one’s down below.” But she didn’t touch anything, merely studying the rocks she could see. Given the size of the fossil bed she believed she was trying to uncover, there was probably lots of good stuff buried in there. Dang. Moving it piece by piece would be a pain.

  Glancing over her shoulder at the egg that had started all this, she wasn’t sure that it was the most important thing after all. If someone was trying to drive them out, surely they thought there was something of more importance here.

  And why was it so damn cold today? It was mid-May, and even here in these northern latitudes there was such a thing as summer. Last autumn when Gray Cloud had shown her this, it had been quite toasty, although with the low humidity it had felt invigorating. Now she had a team wrapped up in jackets and trying not to freeze their fingers off if they needed to use the stream water.

  But thinking about the weather was only a distraction and she knew it. She looked over at Cope, who sat on his boulder and stared at the rock face as if it might answer the questions of the universe.

  “Cope?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why would the lower rockfall happen first?”

  “Well, it could if there was a slight earth movement and it was more on edge than the upper level.”

  She nodded and returned her attention to the rockslide. Fortunate indeed that none of them had been standing there when these rocks came down. The fall below had been much smaller, but still enough to break Larry’s leg. This one, even with hard hats, could have done some true damage to a human body.

  “How are we going to get it out of here?” Another distraction, thinking about the work rather than worrying about Larry and whether someone wanted to stop the dig. Easier to avoid it all. Oddly enough, she’d never before thought of herself as a person who avoided tough subjects. A new self-understanding made her uneasy.

  “We’ll move it carefully, rock by rock, with no one below.” Cope’s answer sounded calm and reasoned.

  “Sure.” Of course. No other way. It wasn’t as if they could bring in heavy equipment to dispose of it.

  “It’ll slow us down,” Cope added.

  “Yeah.” All of a sudden she wasn’t worried about that. Her eyes felt hot and started to burn, and she realized it was all finally penetrating. No tears, she thought, squeezing her eyes closed. She wasn’t the weepy sort.

  She drew a couple of shuddery breaths and felt the tightness in her throat ease as her eyes blinked away the tears that never quite started.

  But she was beginning to wonder if these fossils were worth the risk to any life.

  Someone had been watching them. She, Denise and Cope had all felt it. For what possible reason? This? To hurt someone? Why?

  What was valuable enough for that, unless it was just some sick mind?

  “Renee?”

  “What?”

  “Come sit with me.”

  So she made her way over to the boulder beside his and sat on its reasonably flat surface. “What good will this do?”

  “What?”

  “Sitting here and staring at a bunch of fallen rocks. I ought to be starting to move them out of the way.”

  “Not on your own,” he said firmly. “We’ll take care of them. But right now, I want an assessment of what happened above. A good assessment, because you wouldn’t want any of your team in the way of another rockslide.”

  She caught her breath. She hadn’t even considered there might be another one. “Maybe I should just shut this dig down, at least temporarily. I don’t want to risk lives.”

  “And maybe that’s exactly what someone is hoping for.”

  She twisted her head to look at him. “What are you thinking, Cope?”

  “I’m wondering what’s here that’s more important than the fossils. No clue, so far.”

  * * *

  From across the gorge, through binoculars, the man watched. He knew this mountain like the back of his hand, had walked nearly its every inch. Now he had to save it for the man who’d hired him.

  It struck hi
m as a little strange that someone would be so worried about the fossil hunters, but equally strange that he was supposed to stop them, make them give up, and preferably without killing anyone.

  That wasn’t likely to work and he knew it. So did this Broadus, although the guy pretended to be above it all, purely in it for the greater good.

  Well, Stockman, the guy watching through binoculars across the gorge, believed in the greater good, too. A different good than Broadus believed in evidently. Didn’t matter. He’d pull it all together, and if someone died...well, dying on a sacred mountain wasn’t the worst fate.

  He heard sounds approaching from behind, and darted quickly into a hummock of moss and decayed tree, becoming nearly invisible. Nobody would be looking for him, so it would be good enough.

  Before too long he saw the neighboring rancher, Loren Butler, wending his way on horseback between the trees. The deep layer of pine needles mostly quieted the hoofbeats, but not entirely. Butler didn’t seem to be in a hurry, or even especially attentive. But he was heading directly for the gorge. Why? Stockman’s hands tightened around his binoculars.

  Butler rode with the ease of a man who’d spent a great deal of his time on horseback. He also rode like a man who trusted his mount. The reins were slack; his legs and feet didn’t send any commands. Stockman knew a moment’s envy. He’d once had a horse like that.

  But what the hell was Butler doing out here? The man had a ranch to run, and Stockman knew just how time-consuming that job was. It sure didn’t leave a whole lot of time for wandering in the woods.

  Maybe he’d heard all the hoopla with the evacuation and helicopter. That helicopter was hard to miss when it flew in. A reconditioned Bell UH-1 left over from Vietnam, its rotors made silent approach laughable.

  So yeah, Butler could have heard it. Maybe he was just curious. But ambling along like that didn’t suggest an overwhelming curiosity.

  Maybe Stockman needed to keep an eye on Butler as well. Then Butler cut to the rising side of the mountain, revealing an intimate knowledge of the terrain. Not many people knew that it was possible to get over the river gorge a mile upstream.

  Remaining hunkered down, Stockman waited.

  * * *

  Even over the sound of the rushing water, the approach of horse’s hooves was unmistakable. Renee started to lean over the edge, but Cope pulled her back. “I trusted that yesterday, but not today.”

  He had a point. Instead they both stood and looked down into the gorge. It wasn’t long before they saw Loren Butler on horseback, picking his way through the stream and then up the path that would bring him to them.

  “Him again?” Renee said. “What’s he doing?”

  “I wager he’ll tell us,” Cope said, a tremor of humor in his voice.

  She pretend-frowned at him. “This place is beginning to feel like Union Station.”

  He laughed, a pleasant sound that bounced off the rock face directly in front of them.

  “Howdy,” Loren Butler called when he and his mount reached the top of the path. They both stopped before the rockfall. Renee rose and went to greet him.

  “I wondered what happed,” Butler said. “I saw the medevac copter. I hope the injury wasn’t bad.”

  “Broken leg,” Cope said, joining her. “What brought you up here?”

  It sounded like an innocent question, but Renee realized Cope was looking for information. Butler paused a moment, then swung down from his saddle, walked his horse back ten feet and tethered it to a tree. The wind was picking up again, and instinctively Renee looked upward to the treetops. She didn’t like the way they were tossing. Yeah, they needed bad weather on top of everything else.

  Butler wore cowboy boots, great for riding in the stirrups, not so good for crossing this rough ground, but he managed it. He apparently understood the danger of the slide, because his move across the path they had created was cautious.

  When he reached Renee and Cope, he looked backward and said, “This shouldn’t have happened.”

  “Why do you say that?” Renee asked.

  He settled his gaze on her. “I’ve been living around these mountains my entire life. They’re mostly granite, except for a few areas of sandstone, like where you want to dig those fossils out. Anyway, point being, if that wanted to slide naturally, it would have happened after freezing and thawing during the winter, not after two months of dry weather. Ask your geologist friend.”

  “You know Claudia?” That surprised Renee.

  “I wouldn’t say I know her. Ran into her in town the other day and we jawed a bit about your fossils. Nice gal. Anyway, back to important matters.”

  He frowned from beneath the brim of his cowboy hat and scanned the rock face once again. “Gray Cloud will tell you the mountain opened this up for you.” He gave Renee a piercing look. “And I’ll tell you someone else is trying to close it down.”

  Renee drew a sharp breath. “Do you know who?”

  Butler shook his head. “I’m just guessing because I don’t think that slide should have happened. But Claudia will know. Anyways, I saw the medevac fly in and I got to worrying about you folks. I tried to mind my own business, but that didn’t work so well.” His smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Around here we take care of each other or look the other way, depending. This time looking the other way didn’t feel right.”

  “We were lucky,” Cope said frankly. “Only one injury, what appears to be a simple leg fracture as far as I know.”

  Butler nodded.

  “Pull up a rock,” Renee suggested, drawing a laugh from both Cope and Butler. “We were sitting here staring at the mess we need to clean up and waiting for word from above.”

  “Above?” Butler found himself another boulder and looked up to the top of the cliff. “Who went up?”

  Renee hesitated. Why should he care?

  “Never mind. I hope it’s the rock lady and a cop or two. Attempted murder burns in my craw.”

  Attempted murder. The words, spoken so matter-of-factly, sent a fresh chill coursing down Renee’s spine. She hadn’t allowed those words to cross her mind. Sure, she suspected someone had tried to shut down the site with the rockfalls, but it hadn’t crossed her mind that they might have wanted to actually kill anyone. Suddenly, her jacket and gloves failed to warm her, and she fumbled when she tried to pour herself some coffee from her thermos. Without a word, Cope took the cup and jug from her and poured for her.

  She seized it in both hands and brought it quickly to her mouth. Hot. Good. Murder?

  “Coffee?” Cope offered Butler.

  “No, thanks. I’ve got to be heading back before the shadows get much longer. But you all take care, hear? And if I run across any strangers nosing in these parts, I’ll let you know.”

  Renee spoke. “It might not be a stranger.” Gads, now her lips felt numb.

  “Well, if it’s somebody raised around here, I’m going to be mighty disappointed.” He shrugged. “Guess it wouldn’t be the first time for that, either.”

  Before he left, however, he sat staring at the rock face. “Never been much into dinosaurs, at least since I got older than six or seven, but I have to admit this has got me interested. Maybe even a little excited. You thinking about building a museum here if you find lots of good stuff?”

  “That will be up to the tribe,” Renee answered. “Their land, their find.”

  “So it should be. I got a little worked up when the whole world decided that fossil on the Northern Cheyenne reservation had to be moved. Wasn’t like they weren’t taking care of it.” He looked straight at Renee. “Don’t you let them do it again. Wyoming’s fossils belong in Wyoming, and this branch of Cheyenne have full title. Damn sight more than they got for their gold.”

  Then he was off, picking his way across the rockfall and mounting again. With a fingertip to the brim of his hat, he bade them fare
well and began riding away up the mountain.

  “I think I like him,” Cope remarked.

  “Me, too.” Then she faced him. “What do you think he was trying to find out?”

  Cope paused, a study in thought. “How paranoid do you want me to be?”

  “I thought so. If he was interested in what the chopper was doing here, he’d have come to the area of the base camp, wouldn’t he?”

  Now Cope took a minute before responding. She could almost see the wheels spinning behind his bright blue eyes. “That depends,” he said finally. “He might have already been riding over on his property, in the mountains there. Or maybe he wanted to see if he stumbled on something on his way here. Or maybe...”

  She waved her hand. “Okay, Cope. I get it. Mind-reading is a waste of time.”

  “Well, we can speculate until the sun goes down, and we won’t know anything for certain.” He rose, absently dusting the back of his jeans, and looked back over the gorge.

  He froze.

  “Cope?” Renee felt her own heart quickening. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I thought I saw a glint of something across the gorge, but it could be anything and it’s gone.”

  Just then the radio crackled but Renee didn’t know exactly how to operate it, so she handed it to Cope. He squatted beside her and showed her the all-important button. “Cope here. What’s up?”

  They heard Short’s voice. “We’re headed back down to the camp. Join us there.”

  Renee started to stand, but then hesitated. “Maybe I should stay here. To keep an eye on things.”

  “Over my dead body,” came the stern response. “Besides, if anyone wants to start another landslide, you won’t be able to stop it and you could get killed. Nor will there be anyone up there to prevent them from doing it. Let’s go.”